Bellatrix's Wedding
by Luna Rapunzel
Summary: A series of nonlinear sketches describing the family and blood politics at the wedding of Bellatrix and Rodolphus Lestrange, set from the perspectives of various guests. Andromeda/Rabastan
1. Bas & Meda: Wish Fulfiller

**Wish Fulfiller**

_God_, she hasn't changed. She's so like her sister—but she's _not_, is she, because Andromeda and Bellatrix having identical haughty cheekbones sure as hell doesn't make them the same. Bellatrix—she remains… faithful. But Andromeda—is…

For one thing, her dress robes are black silk and askew, slipping off her left shoulder to hang inches down her arm, and the skin exposed is peach butter and vulnerable, like she is, like he can still taste the ashes of that neck somewhere deep down his throat if she would just _pin_ him down—

Eyes up top, soldier. But (this last regret Rabastan allows himself) maybe he's too much of a masochist to be cut out for all that Mudblood pillaging when Andromeda's not around to wring out all the blood.

"Surprised I made it out here?" she asks him, her voice all doors and cracking.

"I mean, Walburga _did_ burn you off the tapestry, didn't she? I would've thought Bella would be even quicker to count you out for—"

"Marrying for love? What, opposed to _this_ travesty?" Andromeda gives a little spasm, her head jerking in Bellatrix and Rodolphus's direction. Shoulders hunched, Rodolphus is swirling the olive in his glass round and round with a toothpick he's grasping a little too firmly and casting glances at Bellatrix, who's deep in whispers with Lucius Malfoy and glinting with rage. "It's just a rug, Bas. Just because I'm off the rug doesn't mean my sister's suddenly not allowed to invite me to her wedding."

"And _did_ Bella invite you?"

"Would it make you feel better about yourself if I said I was gate-crashing?" She smirks—it's why Rabastan knows better—when she adds, "I'm sorry. That was rude."

But Rabastan knows she isn't sorry. Andromeda's never sorry, not for breaking the _code_ or breaking him or any of it. There's a grin playing at her lips now, her lipstick burnt red and glossy and drawing a little too much attention to the overbite she never bothered to charm away—unapologetic down to the _teeth_, that woman, and it's been so long now he can't recall the feeling, but he used to like the way she'd bite his earlobe and mutter his name. _Bas_. Nobody else calls him that, and he likes it that way.

"She did," Andromeda interrupts (without realizing it). "Invite me. Bella did. I think she's just pretending she didn't for Mother's sake."

He wonders if Ted was worth it to her. Sure, she wasn't giving up much—red WANTED stamps on their foreheads from Dumbledore and the Cruciatus from her mum every time she didn't eat her vegetables—Rabastan isn't _much_, but at least he can say for himself that he stayed. He would have done that as long as she'd have let him, for her.

"We still could," he tells her, because maybe they can.

"Give it a few more drinks and maybe then," Andromeda fires back, and he knows from the way her smile stays bright that she means it, and that he's screwed.


	2. Cissy & Meda: Hate-Proof

**A/N:** I wanted to write a surprise support!fic for a friend of mine, and this happened instead, ROFL. Trigger warning for self-harm.

* * *

><p><strong>HateProof**

Narcissa cannot get the words out. The quill breaks in like be damned if Lucius sees; she's tired—of chatter, yes, but mostly of the sick thing, the black thing. It started when she was very young.

After a time, there's a rap on the bathroom door. The playful pattern tells her it's her sister (the bitch one). "_Me_da," she heaves. Her voice is husked over with cigarettes and too little sleep. Ignoring this, Andromeda says the charm curtly and pushes inside.

Get away from her.

"You look god awful, Cissy."

"_Thanks_."

"No, I mean it; you look like a war."

And Narcissa probably _is_ a war, or the tumbleweeds of one, anyway. Ink or something like it splashes medallions into her thighs, little round dollops of honor, and Andromeda's wand is poised like she can scab it all over, but she left, didn't she, and it's done, it's all gone.

Narcissa is very even when she tells her, "Lock the door."

With her free hand, she does.

Then Narcissa's hand is lashing at the wand—get it away, get it away from her legs—and Andromeda is pinning her wrist to the wall and hissing _Episkey_ like a Stunner, and Narcissa cannot be _numbed_ but cannot wriggle out from under her aim or her fucked love and just wants to be held at this point, truly—bound tightly enough to still her tremors and pressed cheek-down into the mattress, someone's hand weaving circles like spinning wheel into her back, anyone's, almost. She wants anyone's hand but Andromeda's, not Andromeda with her fix-all wand and loose lips that sting, every time, because Andromeda didn't stay. She wouldn't _stay_, and if Narcissa could just rewind the leaving part and keep her tethered…

She liked Andromeda better when she was always weeping. At least she was kind, then, and trying. "Let me up," says Narcissa. Andromeda's grip on her wrist is starting to pang, not that that's new.

When she releases Narcissa, it's like she's releasing the whole shebang with all of her body, positively recoiling from the closeness of their bloodstreams and splattering against the opposite wall. Unabashedly, Narcissa bends down to pull up the layers at her ankles one by one—underwear, pantyhose—back over her thighs and snugly under her dress robes.

It is a hate tattoo—a proof tattoo—that Andromeda is trying to erase, but she cannot get them out of Narcissa, not the the words and not the ink-mind, and get _away_ from her, don't soften those eyes like that if she's not going to stay, and Andromeda never stays. She never stays for drinks, and she never stays for letters, and she won't _be_ someone when the reception is over and Narcissa dislodges once again. She doesn't need patchwork. What she needs is for the bitch one to _undo_ it, and that—well, she couldn't even if she wanted to, and Andromeda never passes up a chance to clarify how little she would want to.

Andromeda says steadily, "I could stay the night."

"Right."

"Bas can wait. That's a bad decision anyway."

"But you'd go in the morning," she says, and she hates the whimper.

"Yes, I'd go in the morning."

"Okay," says Narcissa, and it isn't fair. She will hold this against Andromeda in all the next battles, she's sure, and she will be the one to instigate them all. If she could help it—this, _this_, is the crucial part Andromeda and all of them are missing—by now, Narcissa would have stopped clutching.


End file.
